


Gaps

by aurumdalseni (kyo_chan)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, I'm really sorry for this, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shiro Week 2017, Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 13:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12771804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyo_chan/pseuds/aurumdalseni
Summary: Shiro's grasp of time is slipping, and he's unable to escape the feeling that pieces of himself keep falling away. He seeks answers anywhere he can, and it hurts to come up empty handed.





	Gaps

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 1 of Shiro Week - Space/Time  
> Many thanks to the lovely Ashinan for reminding me it's okay to write a story that hurts. Thank you for reading!

Shiro thought that creating a calendar would help. He’d used his tablet to draw the squares and got caught up in the merciless task of getting the lines just so. Each square looked the same size, and that seemed worth the effort. His hand hovered over the first day, an inevitable “day one”. But did the first fall on a Sunday this month? What month was it? What year, for that matter? That ache in his temple came back with a vengeance, and he closed the entire thing without saving it.

“What—” he said through clenched teeth, “—what day is it?”

His tablet bleeped. “Today is the fourth quintent of the spicolian movement.”

“How many spicolian movements are in a decaphebe?”

“Forty-seven, except in a skip-decaphebe, in which there are forty-six.”

Shiro tossed the tablet aside and drew his knees up to his chest. If only his head would stop hurting, then maybe he could make sense of things. Of the gaps his mind kept falling into. They were the holes in his memory, the things he couldn’t recall, time lost in captivity and literal chunks of life stolen from him. He dearly wanted to put numbers to it all, quantifiable data to act as puzzle pieces of who he was. Until he could find a way to get that time back, either in memories or in fact, he felt lost. And still, he ignored the urge to ask the tablet if it could calculate earth time. Part of him didn’t actually want the answer yet, and the other part thought it would be cheating. That time wasn’t real until he remembered it.

His head continued to throb.

~*~

The Kerberos launch had been August 18; the date was a brand on Shiro’s brain. He’d repeated it over and over before the mission, the day that would change his life. He’d had no idea.

“Hmm…” Hunk’s thoughtful hum snapped Shiro back into the moment. “September first, I think.”

Had Shiro asked a question? His mind had wandered to waking up in Keith’s home out in the desert. He’d tried. He’d tried to tell the Garrison something was wrong. They didn’t want to listen. They’d asked him how long he’d been gone, and he couldn’t give that answer. His sense of space and time had all run together, and at that moment, he hadn’t remembered where any of it had gone.  _ When did I crash back to earth?  _ He didn’t realize he’d said it out loud until Hunk answered him. Another stolen moment.

“We bombed a sim that day,” Hunk continued, his back to Shiro as he worked on that day’s meal. “Lance was feelin’ pretty crappy about it, so I agreed to a team building exercise. It was really just us sneaking out, so it was against my better judgement, but you know how Lance can be.”

Shiro did but he didn’t. Had he really gotten enough time to know any of them like he knew Keith? Understanding how the other Paladins and their Lions would react in battle wasn’t  _ knowing _ them. And yet, he wanted so desperately to know them. To know himself. To really know this new life born of a dream that became a nightmare.

“Shiro?”

He blinked and Hunk came back into focus behind a burst of sunspots and an ache that was becoming the most familiar and reliable thing about himself.

“It’s time to set the table.”

“Right.”

When was it going to be time to heal?

~*~

**::This is not for you to see.::**

Shiro’s eyes snapped open, and he saw all of the Black Lion’s screens come into focus, the walls of her hangar, where it was just the two of them. Shiro’s face was wet, and his throat hurt. From across their bond, Black  _ ached _ with him. His fists clenched tight on the armrests, and he felt an empty rage start in his chest while he tried not to punch a screen.

“That’s not true.” He didn’t sound like himself. Didn’t that just feel ironic?

**::It is.::**

“I’ve lost so much time already. Don’t you understand?”

**::More than you can comprehend, young one. Taking you to those places darkened by your mind will harm you far more than will help you.::**

Shiro swallowed a lump in his throat that tasted like blood. Black didn’t speak to him in words, but rather sensations that became their own language when etched on the places she touched within his heart. A part of him didn’t care about the harm. He’d been harmed more than enough without his say-so. Why couldn’t he choose a pain that would connect the fragments of his life? 

“That bad, huh?” He laughed with no humor whatsoever.

**::Not good.::**

Another laugh escaped as he scrubbed at his face. He had a migraine so bad, his vision tinged red. Collapsing back into his seat, he felt defeated, half-person and half-ghost. “What do I do now?”

**::Move forward. That will always be behind you. Looking back will not help you now.**

It felt cold, the Lion’s words chasing a shiver down his spine. Of course, there was no choice but to keep going. His own words bounced right back to him in a heartbeat. Funny how he had no trouble remembering that this whole coalition, being the Black Paladin, wasn’t about him. It was about the team. Breaking himself with things he wasn’t strong enough to stomach wouldn’t help them at all. How very un-leaderlike of him. 

He sat up, put his elbows on his knees and put his face into his hands. Breathe in. Breathe out. He had things he needed to do, a mission he had to carry out. The gaps would remain scattered across his senses, and he would shove all of his responsibility into them until they burst. He was on borrowed time; best keep himself focused until that hourglass ran out.

The Black Lion lowered her head to let him out, mouth open in a soundless sigh of resignation that he felt down into his bones. Behind him, the screens went static and snuffed out.

Another hole to fill.


End file.
